In the field of the conventional technology, combinatory circuits and logic devices may be microelectronically embodied such that each bit of a state stored in a register, for example, is physically represented by precisely one electrical node at the register output. For the thus designated “single rail circuit technology” same applies to all nodes within a combinatory circuit between the registers as well as for the inputs thereof. In general, precisely one electrical node corresponds to one logic value of an (intermediate) state bit or its complement.
In the field of security applications, for memory packages in particular, various methods of attack are known from which memory packages in the field of conventional technology are to be protected. The differential power analysis (DPA) is a common technique for attacking ICs (IC=integrated circuit) and/or memory packages. These attacks also serve for assessing the sensitivity of packages to security applications with respect to deliberate attacks on “confidential” information such as passwords or cryptographic keys. For a given program or a given algorithm, in these attacks, power profiles measured by statistical methods and/or their charge integrals calculated over one or more clock cycles are evaluated wherein, for a multitude of program executions, conclusions to the information to be protected may be drawn from the correlation of systematic data variation and a respective charge integral.